Republicans Are Now Appealing to Angry Sexism to Destroy Elizabeth Warren

After all, it worked on Hillary.

Republicans are about as subtle as a brick these days and they've already signaled how they think they can win the 2018 midterms with the disastrously unpopular slow motion car crash they've hitched their wagon to: Run against Elizabeth Warren because ovaries and breasts make Trump voters angry and angry voters show up on Election Day.

Warren is getting top billing in news releases by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund, a prominent Republican super PAC with ties to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The NRSC is launching a new round of digital ads on Wednesday dinging incumbent Democrats for voting with Warren, officials said. And it's just a matter of time before she's featured prominently in TV ads, too.

"Elizabeth Warren is the face of the Democratic Party," said National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Cory Gardner (Colo.). "She's extremely popular with their base, and that's why she's leading them right now. That's why [Democrats] are voting 100 percent of the time with Elizabeth Warren."

Republicans would have us believe that their voters hate Warren because she's some kind of latte-sipping coastal snob. But, curiously, Warren's entire message is the exact same kind of economic populism that Trump ran on. Except with more intelligence and coherence and minus the sexism, racism and ugliness. If Trump's voters were really motivated by their "economic anxiety," Elizabeth Warren would be the very last person you'd want running against Trump.

Specifically, the researchers conclude that racism and sexism explain most of Trump's enormous electoral advantage with non-college-educated white Americans, the group that arguably gave Trump the election. "We find that while economic dissatisfaction was part of the story, racism and sexism were much more important and can explain about two-thirds of the education gap among whites in the 2016 presidential vote," the researchers write.

There's no central minority figure in the Democratic Party at the moment so appealing to their base's racism is out. That leaves sexism as the only card they have left. This is because Republicans are in a tough spot and they know it. They control Washington, meaning they cannot blame anything that happens over the next two years on the Democrats. They'll try, of course, but it won't be very convincing.

And true to their nature, Republicans' main priorities are making life worse for the average American and much better for the average billionaire. With an agenda so nakedly at odds with their campaign promises, Republicans need a war, a terror attack or someone to focus the hate and rage of their base on as a distraction. Since it's unclear that Trump is competent enough to start a war and terrorism is unpredictable at best, Elizabeth Warren's genitalia will have to do.

At the same time, Warren is a serious threat looming on the horizon. Not a few Republicans breathed a sigh of relief when she declined to run during the 2016 election cycle. But at 67, she will be easily young enough to run in 2020. As an authentic economic populist who is extremely popular with both Millennials and older Democrats, the possibility exists that another 2008 rout would put Warren in place with the power to make meaningful reforms that Republicans won't be able to stop or easily undermine. Better to start laying the groundwork now for a 24/7 smear campaign against her.